News: Design and business, art and technology, ideas and good stuff
Dispatches | Michael Herr | War journalism | Books to read
2026
[The soldier] was crying, trying to look away while I tried not to look. Michael Herr, Dispatches.
Dispatches is a classic work of Vietnam War literature—part journalism, part memoir, part literary experiment. An early and outstanding example of the New Journalism, Herr’s rendering of his experiences as a Vietnam War correspondent are immersive and subjective. He writes in a fast, almost hallucinatory, stream-of-consciousness style. Not about military strategy but about the experience–masculinity, violence, brotherhood. Raw, personal and morally unsettled. Exceptionally brilliant.
Herr later co-wrote Apocalypse Now, a film directed by Francis Ford Coppola.
Assembly | Natasha Brown | New British fiction | Books to read
2026
Assembly by Natasha Brown is a short, sharp novel about a successful black British woman navigating corporate finance, wealth, race, and power in contemporary Britain. As she prepares to attend her boyfriend’s elite family gathering, she reflects on the personal costs of assimilation, ambition, and structural inequality. The book blends social critique with intimate self-examination, questioning success, belonging, and what it means to live within systems built to exclude you.
The things they carried | Tim O’Brien | Vietnam war literature | Books to read
2026
A collection of linked stories about American soldiers in the Vietnam War. It explores not only the physical items they carry—like weapons, letters, and photos—but also emotional burdens such as fear, guilt, love, and trauma. Blending fact and fiction, the book examines memory, storytelling, and the psychological impact of war, showing how soldiers struggle to make sense of their experiences both during and after combat.
Flesh | David Szalay | 2025 Booker Prize | Books to read
2026
Flesh (2025) by David Szalay traces the life of István, a taciturn Hungarian man whose impulsive decisions carry him from troubled youth and poverty to unexpected wealth and social status in London. Despite outward success, he remains emotionally detached, shaped by trauma, instinct, and physical experience. Sparely written and episodic, the novel explores masculinity, alienation, class, and the limits of language in capturing inner life.
The anxious generation | Jonathan Haidt | Psychology | Books to read
2026
The book argues that today’s surge in anxiety, depression, and social withdrawal among young people—especially Gen Z—is largely driven by how childhood changed in the 2010s. Its central thesis: childhood shifted from being play-based and independence-rich to phone-based and safety-obsessed, and that shift rewired kids’ social, emotional, and cognitive development—particularly during adolescence.
Why we’re polarised | Ezra Klein | Political science | Books to read
2026
Published in 2020, the book analyses the deepening political polarisation in the United States. Core ideas: identity as the root of polarisation, historical realignment (Civil Rights Act of 1964), structural loops (political institutions, media, psychology, social sorting), and polarised politics ‘by design’.
Klein suggests that almost all political conflict today is identity-driven rather than rooted in restrained policy disagreement. His book helps explain why political debates feel less about policy and more about who we are.
The crisis of democratic capitalism | Martin Wolf | Political science | Books to read
2026
Democracy under strain.
Wolf argues that democratic capitalism is in a systemic crisis, not because markets or democracy are inherently flawed, but because the balance between them has broken down.
Wolf is especially concerned with authoritarian populism, which he sees as a symptom rather than the root problem. When democratic capitalism fails to deliver security and fairness, voters turn to leaders who promise protection—even at the cost of liberal norms. Economic disfunction feeds cultural and political fracture (polarisation).
